A note on the transcendental meromorphic solutions of Hayman's equation

Abstract: We present a complete description of the form of transcendental meromorphic solutions of the second order differential equation \begin{equation}\tag{\dag} w''w-w'^2+a w'w+b w^2=\alpha{w}+\beta{w'}+\gamma, \end{equation} where $a,b,\alpha,\beta,\gamma$ are all rational functions. Together with the Wiman--Valiron theorem, our results yield that any transcendental meromorphic solution $w$ of $(\dag)$ has hyper-order $\varsigma(w)\leq n$ for some integer $n\geq 0$. Moreover, if $w$ has finite order $\sigma(w)=\sigma$, then $\sigma$ is in the set ${n/2: n=1,2,\cdots}$ and, if $w$ has infinite order and $\gamma\not\equiv0$, then the hyper-order $\varsigma$ of $w$ is in the set ${n: n=1,2,\cdots}$. Each order or hyper-order in these two sets is attained for some coefficients $a,b,\alpha,\beta,\gamma$.